1979 Rock Classic Featuring 3-Minute Twin Guitar Solos Became a Road Trip Anthem
In 1979, Blackfoot had a breakout hit with "Highway Song." The single from the Florida-based rock band's platinum-certified album Strikes was released on June 12, 1979, and hit No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Written by Rickey Medlocke and Jackson Spires, "Highway Song" clocks in at seven minutes on the album version, and nearly half of the run time is devoted to explosive guitar work by Medlocke and Charlie Hargrett. The song finishes with an extended guitar jam- over three minutes of blazing twin guitar solos.
Ultimate Classic Rock once ranked "Highway Song" as one of the top Southern rock songs of all time, describing it as the "perfect song for all the truckers out there."
"Featuring an absolutely blistering guitar solo, ‘Highway Song' has enough adrenaline to keep you awake even on the longest of rides," the outlet noted.
Medlocke once told Songfacts that he wrote "Highway Song" while in the band's tour van on the way to New Jersey from North Carolina.
"We were on Interstate 81 going north. We were right around Winchester, Virginia, and I started playing it," he said. "I wrote the opening of the lyrics, 'Another day another dollar, after I've sang and hollered,' and it took off from there."
The music legend said the song only took about 20 minutes total to write.
"I said to Jak: 'I have the song' and I started playing it...and that started it, and within about 15 to 20 minutes, honestly, the song was written, just like you hear it now," Medlocke revealed in an interview with Hit Channel. "It was magic, and when a song comes to you that quick, you know you've got something special on your hands, and we knew it."
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While "Highway Song" and "Train Train" were the two singles from Strikes, Medlocke felt the song "Left Turn on a Red Light" also deserved to be a single.
"When we recorded it, man, it just had a feel about it," the Blackfoot co-founder told Nuvo in 2023. "It was the one song. I was so angry that the record company did not release it as a single because people were already playing it and just loving it. There you go, there's the music business for you. I believe that one song after ‘Highway Song' and ‘Train Train' would have catapulted that record. Instead of double platinum would have probably catapulted it to triple, maybe even quadruple platinum."
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This story was originally published June 10, 2026 at 3:04 AM.